The End Where We Begin
by RoseWolf21
Summary: For a moment, Sam paused, uncertain whether he wanted to explain—much less remember—what it was that had gotten him into this mess. With everything that has happened, the last thing he wanted to do was remember how alone he was in the world. But this girl, she knew about the hunting life...maybe, just maybe…he could trust this girl with his loss. PART 1: 'The Gravekeeper' Series


****Stars shine, cold and unfeeling in the night sky; he could carry their weight. All he can see is the long empty road ahead and the pool of gore he left behind. Blood, his could smell it even now, that shadowed shape in the backseat projected that metallic tang all throughout the cab of the car, churning the driver's stomach against his will. Oh, if his brother could see him now; tears streaming down his flaming red face as screams and echoes rang endlessly like a broken record playing in his ears. Banging on the barred doors from the hounds he couldn't see—

 _"Hellhound." His brother recognised that thunderous sound almost immediately._

 _"Where? Dean?" the younger man looked around, Ruby's knife at the ready, even for the adversary he couldn't see._

 _Dean turned, pointing at thin air at the start of the hall. "There." That's where the invisible storm was coming from—the storm that howled. "Sammy, run!"_

 _Growls like thunder, shapeless like thunder, and faster than lightning, that invisible storm followed Sam, Dean and their demon ally until they barricaded themselves away in what looked to be the office of the house they'd found. They could all hear it. But he couldn't see it._

 _The moment those doors slammed shut, his brother immediately pulled the little burlap bag from the inside of his worn leather jacket. Collapsing against the door, his older brother poured a line of black dust from the burlap bag, just inside the threshold of the door—a barrier against the invisible creatures struggling to find them._

 _Just as quickly as it started—the pounding stopped—the house seemed suddenly silent. The blonde-haired demon suddenly turned to Sam. "Give me the knife, Sam. Maybe I can hold them off."_

 _The taller man looked at her, caught off guard by her suddenly abrupt manner. Ruby had always been blunt, but Sam had never counted her to be demanding. "What?"_

 _"Come on!" She insisted, motioning to him with an open palm. "That diamond dust of yours isn't gonna last forever, Sam. Give me the knife."_

 _Something wasn't right, he could feel it. Sam observed her for a few moments, even as the unnerving silence stretched throughout the house. Could a creature like her fight off a hellhound with a toothpick-knife? Could he trust this demon that much? He was already pushing his boundaries just going this far; his brother's even more so. But what else could survive taking on a hellhound? He slowly loosened his grip on the knife, just about to hand it over when he heard his brother shout;_

 _"Wait!"_

 _Sam turned to him. "Dean?"_

 _"That's not Ruby," Dean insisted, hushed at first, then the panic hit. "Sam, that's not Ruby!"_

Sights he saw, and words he said flash through Sam's mind until they're all he can see. The road ahead hardly exists anymore. All he can sense is the panic he remembers. Heart pounding and head aching, the needle on the dash rising desperately, without thought. She had them stuck, cornered. Her eyes rolled back until they were pure white, and both brothers could see the truth of who had stolen Ruby's meat-suit. LILITH.

 _Within moments she had thrown Dean across the room and pinned him to a table; all the fire Dean had in him to fight back, it was no use against Lilith's powers of control. Sam thrust his arm towards her, trying to catch her with the knife, but she threw him back against the wall with a bang before he could. He was helpless, useless; he couldn't save his brother even as they both watched Lilith open the barricaded door without lifting a finger._

 _"Sic'em boy."_

 _Just like that, with a laughing smirk, a demon watches a good man die and scream, while his brother struggles against the invisible monster. Fear. Helpless. Panic. Dean was torn apart by an unseen monster. Sam yelled at the hellhound. It grabs his brother by his legs and pulls him down as he screams. Sam yelled at Lilith. The hound has already slashed Dean's right leg, suddenly attacking his chest as he screams in pain. Sam yelled at his brother. But no one listened. Lilith only smiled as the brothers shouted. The hound slashes Dean's skin into ribbons across his back and his shoulder. Horror and pain. The hound pulls Dean over and cuts him over his breast, blood gushing out. Last breaths, red and fluttering with a chest torn open. Blood pouring, without sound. No more screaming, only silence. But Death hadn't reached him yet._

 _Sam struggles with every ounce of strength, burning to reach out to his brother, but Lilith won't let him She holds out her hand, and suddenly white light erupts from it, bright and brighter until Sam can barely hope to keep his eyes open. But as quickly as it came, her white light retracts, her eyes are still white but slowly turning back to normal, looking confused and shocked. Sam's body collapses to the floor with the lack of pressure pushing him away, his form folded in a corner next to a cabinet, slowly opening his eyes to look up at her. Teeth grinding, nostrils flared, the last Winchester rises to his full six and a half-foot height, staring down the demon that allowed his brother to die._

 _Now—now the demon is afraid; "S-Stay back." She says, trying to keep up that hard tone that he'd picked up on before, watching as Sam bends down to pick up Ruby's knife, walking towards her._

 _It doesn't work. Sam pulls back his hand, and motions to stab her, but suddenly Lilith ejects herself from Ruby's body. Black smoke erupted from her mouth through the vent in the roof as she screams, the body crumpling to the floor as soon as the twisted monster disappears. Lilith was gone. Dean doesn't move. His eyes are open like he's watching the whole thing, but he isn't. Sam's heart pounds in his ears, overriding the sound of his breathing. He can't breathe, and neither can his brother. Dean is dead._

Sam, he remembers. Tears made everything murky. He drives down a long empty road…everything stings. The Blood in his nose pricking him with its iron tang. The salt of his tears, the ones he fought so hard to hold back despite the thick pain in his heart…everything stings. Kneeling over his big brother's lifeless body, he cried, and he still hasn't stopped. Echoes in his ears, in the cab of the car ' **family, don't end with blood.' 'Family don't end with blood.'** Over and over again. Sam tried to hold him, one forehead to another, but his skin was drenched in blood, already cold. He sat there beside his bloodied brother for what felt like hours. It can't end this way. It hasn't. It won't. Family **won't** end with blood. It can't end this way. It won't.

 _Then came a knocking noise._

 _Sam looked over his shoulder at the sound. A stout older man stood there in the doorway, with a greased trucker's hat and worn out jeans. He didn't come closer. He only stood there and said; "You ready? For the usual drill?"_

 _"No. Not yet." Sam said, unable to bring his voice above a whisper._

 _"Alright, when?" The older man asked._

 _"We're not going to burn him, Bobby." If anything, Sam was sure of that. From the moment those claw marks first tore across his brother's skin, his mind was made up._

 _"What?!"_

 _"I said, we aren't going to burn him._ _" Sam insisted firmly. Nothing else needed to be said; nothing could sway him from what needed to get done._

 _"So, what, you just want to put him in the ground with a stick over his head?" Bobby drawled, his voice crackling with dry incredulity._

 _"He's going to need a body, Bobby," Sam told him with certainty. "I've gotta get him back somehow."_

 _One beat of silence._

 _"You're joking."_

 _No answer. Another beat of silence._

 _"Do you want me to come with ya?"_

 _"I'll find a spot to bury him." Sam said softly, "I'll call you if I need your help." He tried not to sound unkind, but tact was suddenly much more difficult than it used to be, once upon a time._

 _Bobby's lip puckered, and Sam knew precisely how he felt. But, yet again, this was another thing the young Winchester was dead set on. Eventually, the older hunter seemed to accept that: "Alright then." He said. "Whenever you're ready."_

And just like that, Bobby Singer walked away, leaving Sam Winchester with his brother. In pieces on the ground. Alone again, Sam let himself cry, but he wasn't sitting still anymore. Carefully, he removed the necklace Dean always wore; the one Sam had given him for Christmas. Then, ever so gingerly, Sam carried his brother's dead body, bridal-style, to the Impala. Bobby was already down the road in his van by the time Sam stepped out of the house, so it was alone that Sam had had to load lifeless Dean into the backseat of the car. Slamming the door shut, Sam walked over, started the car, and drove away. If Dean were alive, driving the Impala would have been an honour and a privilege, considering how protective Dean was of his precious wheels. But now, the thought of it only served to drag Sam deeper into his profound grief. The tear tracks on his face are mourning his hell-bound brother.

Now here he was, driving down a long and empty road, struggling to hold back tears. The memories, the thoughts, the pain. It just wouldn't stop. Continually bombarding him every time he blinked. Dean was in the back of the car, waiting to for burial. Even though he knew better, part of Sam still wondered _maybe._ Maybe, if Sam looked over his shoulder even once, he would see his beloved brother sitting there in the backseat…sleeping or something. Sam could see just one little light coming closer across the distance, but once the paved road turned to gravel, Sam couldn't help himself. He took a pathetic, hopeless glance over his shoulder only to get smacked by another tidal wave of that atrocious smell. The metallic tang of blood, the cottony bitterness of dying flesh, all compounding with the prickling smell of that leather cleaner Dean always kept in the glove box to clean his car.

Everything shattered, all over again, and Sam just couldn't take it anymore. He tore the speeding Impala from the road and shoved it to a screaming halt on the gravel beside. The world as Sam knew it had crashed down around him, Dean was laid out in the back of the car, but he wasn't sleeping. It was something worse than sleeping; it was Death, it was Hell. Now here he was, he was alone. After the fact, without Dean, Sam was alone. The thought only brought on more robust tears. He thought he'd run out of tears a hundred miles ago…he couldn't have been more wrong.

A knocking came to the window.

Sam jumped suddenly, startled into looking at the sound. No, it wasn't Dean—not like he'd hoped—it was a girl, standing at the nearest window in the half-dark in a thin grey hoodie, a denim vest, pale washed jeans, and her long, dark blonde hair fluttering under her round, elongated chin. Bangs brushed her thinly layered brows, leaving her deep, dark eyes completely visible, reflecting the starlight above their head as looked at Sam and waited. Realizing that the car was still running, Sam rolled down the window. The girl spoke first.

"You alright there, s-?" she asked, her question trailing off unexpectedly once she got a better look at his face.

Suitably embarrassed, Sam quickly sniffed and wiped his face with his sleeve. "Yea." He said. "I'm alright."

His reaction seemed to shake her out of her shocked stupor. "Are you sure?" She asked, her brow pinching low between her eyes with the weight of concern. "You seem pretty…devastated. Is everything ok?"

No answer.

The girl's nose scrunching suddenly, prompting her to step back a pace and scan the car. Scan complete; she climbed back up to Sam's window.

"You wouldn't happen to be a…" Her voice trailed off for a moment when she rolled her lips together. But Sam's curiously confused expression prompted her to continue. " You're not a hunter of any sort, are you? Have we met before?"

Sam's eyes widened. "What?" he asked, tense and wary.

"Oh no-no, don't worry, I have a friend who's a hunter." The intuitive girl assured him, pulling something out from the collar of her T-shirt. "He taught me to take precautions, see?" She said, revealing an Anti-Possession charm on a leather string. "You are a hunter, aren't you?"

Utterly lost for words, Sam couldn't do much more than nod, uncertain of whether he wanted to explain—much less remember—what it was that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. Yes, he was a hunter, but with that title now came this…emptiness. With everything that had happened this past day, this past _year,_ the last thing he wanted to do was remember how alone he was in the world.

"How'd you get into the business?" she asked, and Sam had to fight the urge to wince. He didn't want to open that can of worms right now, the question that involved looking back on his life was just…unbearable. But wasn't that just how Dean had been feeling this past year? Not wanting to look back and think about the deal he made, no discussions, no regrets, no nothing. If anything, Sam realised, his big brother kept putting himself in even more danger until he got called out for it—a terrifying coping mechanism if there ever was one.

Now, without Dean by his side, Sam could see himself following that same path, even at this very moment. Without Dean, without anyone else to talk to, what else could he do to keep from destroying himself? This girl, she knew about the hunting life, she knew some things bumped around in the night and had lost a loved one because of it. Maybe, just maybe, he could trust this girl with his loss. Only for a little while. "My mom," Sam said, remembering, not thinking about which words he let into the air. "She was killed by a demon when I was still a baby. My family's been hunting ever since."

The girl's face fell. "—Your family? And yet you're out here all alone?"

"My dad died two years ago." Sam clarified, "He made a deal with a demon." …Like maybe saying that would make anything better.

"So it's just you now?" she asked.

Sam's eyes stung, but he made the mistake of blinking and felt the chill of water falling silently down his face. "No, I had a brother, but…" He swallowed and shook his head again. "not anymore."

The girl glanced down at her feet in sad realisation, rolling her lips together just before she found the words to speak. "That's where the smell of blood is coming from, isn't it?"

"Yea." Sam choked out, a creaking sound splitting his voice against his will. "He's dead."

The girl reached out, putting her hand on his shoulder a little in comfort. "Are you looking for a place to salt and-?"

"No," Sam said suddenly, with conviction. "He's gonna need a body. Cause I'm going to get him back. I'm gonna find a way to bring him back." He said, never taking his head off the steering wheel.

The girl blinked a moment, surprised, but quickly took Sam's determination in stride, never taking her hand from his shoulder. "Ok." She said calmly. "We'll find a place to bury him, then. There's an empty forest lot not too far from here. That sounds good to you?"

Sam looked at her, then quickly looked away and wiped his eyes. "Um, yea. The forest's as good a place as any, I guess."

"Alright," The girl said, pushing off the driver's side door and coming round the hood to the passenger side. "You got any wood in the trunk to build a coffin? Cuz I've got some scrap driftwood out behind the store if you don't."

"What? What Store?" Sam looked over at her, puzzled. She knocked dutifully, and he rolled that passenger window down for her before she responded.

"I run the convenience store down the road!" She explained., once her voice could be heard. "I'll just grab a few things from there and meet you right back here. I'll take you straight to the lot after that, I promise."

Not knowing what else to do, Sam stayed where he was, by his brother's car, and waited for her. Less than five minutes later, the girl came jogging back up to Sam and the Impala. Planks of wood under both arms, and a bouquet of flowers in her other hand. But when she came back, she saw something new hanging around Sam's neck.

"Hey. I'm back. What's that?" the girl asked when she reached him.

Sam looked down at his chest; then he saw the amulet. "Oh. It was a gift. I gave it to Dean for Christmas, when we were on the road as kids. Dean was wearing it today when he, uh…"

"Hey, it's ok." The girl interrupted him softly, "I understand." Sam just nodded mutely. "Is it ok if I sit in the shotgun?" the girl asked. "So I can show you where to go?"

Sam nodded again. "Yea." He managed to say hoarsely.

"Thanks." She said.

And they were off. About a mile down the road from where Sam had pulled over, they found a 20-acre lot of trees on the side of the road. Sam was grateful for the shop girl's help. Without her, it might have taken him forever to bury his brother; he might have been too paralysed to move, utterly terrified. –Terrified of what, though What could any hunter be afraid of after losing…everything? Sam knew the answer before he finished asking himself the question. It was almost like, if someone lost a limb, then they were told that there wasn't another prosthesis in the world that could make his body whole again. Whoever had lost a part of themselves would just have to go and continue living.

In the back seat of Dean's car, the shadows are so thick; there is no evidence that anyone is there except for the smell. That sickly metallic sting that draws carnivores, blood-suckers, but repels all others. Sam knew his brother would be beyond pissed if any of that crimson stench soaked up into the carpeting of his beloved Impala. For a moment, the last Winchester can't help but hold his forearm up to his nose. Dean's car isn't supposed to smell like dead man's blood, and neither is he, but of course he can. Everyone can.

Standing in front of this insurmountable task, Sam Winchester learned something about fear, about panic. Not panic like his lungs had run out of oxygen, but like the atmosphere itself have been vacuumed of it. The shop girl still stood a little behind him before the gaping backdoor of the car, slowly copying his movements as he lowered his arm from his nose. Instead of cowering, she rests her hand on Sam's lowered elbow and pulls herself one step forward, to stand beside him. The two strangers look not ahead, but at each other…that makes it bearable. Something about seeing life instead of death, helped Sam feel as if, against all the odds, the world wasn't over just because Dean was. He didn't know who she was, he didn't know her at all, but somehow, she helped.

She helped him carry Dean's body into the woods, her arms grasping the loose ankles, his arms beneath Dean's lifeless shoulders. She was amazed at the arsenal (including shovels) that were able to fit in the trunk of the Impala. And she was no stranger to hard work. Digging over six feet of dirt out of a roughly rectangular hole. Then, taking hammers and nails out of the trunk, she helped Sam plank together a roughly-Dean sized make-shift coffin out of the wood she had brought. Slowly the worn sunburnt boards began to form a makeshift bed as the two strangers worked through the night. Both of them were vaguely out of practice with these unfamiliar tools, once Sam remembered hitting his thumb instead of a nail while the girl was preoccupied with sawing the boards.

The moment she heard his exclamation of pain, she stopped her work and crawled across the dirt of check on him. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yea," Sam grunted against the pulsing pain in his hand. "Yea I'll be fine."

And back to work, they went, but Sam might have noticed the way she glanced up from her side of the job more frequently. The sort of trying-and-failing to be subtle check-up that Dean would do when the younger brother injured himself on a hunt. None of the injuries he'd suffered in those cases with Dean would ever compare to the wrenching pain that he felt without his brother there beside him. Hundreds of Tuesdays be damned.

For as long as he'd been in the hunting world, Sam Winchester could always count on his big brother. But now that Dean was gone, what was the little brother supposed to do? In the end, laying his big brother in there was a bit difficult; it was dark, Sam was crying and the redneck, the thrown-together wood coffin was a bit of a tight fit, but the mission worked itself out eventually.

Before Sam could callously shove the lid of the coffin into place, the shop girl suddenly tensed. "Shoot!"

"What?" Sam asked with a glance.

"I forgot something." She said, turning away from his side as if to run the other way.

"What could you possibly forget?" Sam asked, confused.

"Just give me two seconds, it's all in the Impala, just two seconds." She told him, running back through the forest to the car.

Two minutes later, she was back. Two white oak stakes in one hand, her bouquet of flowers in the other. Sam watched her as she dropped it all on the forest floor, picked up a hammer and a nail and started to work something with the stakes. "What are you going to do with that wood?" Sam asked.

"Well, unless you've got a big stone slab in that handy-dandy trunk of yours, I'm gonna make do with what I have, and show your brother some good old-fashioned respect." She said back, somehow making her idea sound like the most practical thing in the world.

Lifting up the stakes and admiring her handy-work, the shop girl revealed a white oak cross. Taking it and the hammer in her hands, he trotted to the head of what would soon be Dean's grave and hammered that cross roughly six inches into the ground so that it would stay upright. Stepping back around and picking up her flowers, she came to stand beside Sam and check her work, her hands seemingly warm in the cold air of the night when she gently held his arm. "Is there anything you want to say to him before we cover him up?" she asked.

Sam stopped. One deep, shuddering breath. "No. Dean wouldn't take any misty good-bye speeches while he was alive. I doubt he'd want one now, even at his burial." He said, some sort of bitter half-laugh sneaking past against his will, glad to have _someone_ to lean on in this terrible moment.

The girl let her hand rest there for just a moment longer, observing his expression. "—Are you sure?"

One more deep breath, flipping through the pages upon pages of memories in his mind…and suddenly he knew. Shuffling through his pockets, Sam felt for Dad's old lighter and pulled it out slipping it into Dean's one dry jacket pocket. "In case you need it, man." He whispered hoarsely, his voice aching from his grated throat. With that, the last Winchester stepped back, letting the girl place the lid on gently, pressing down to make sure it fits together correctly.

Together they remained silent as they slid the coffin to the hole in the ground and finally buried the man Sam would always call his brother. It was only after the dirt finally packed against the earth that the girl looked up again. "You gonna okay?" She asked.

"Yea." Sam lied, turning back to the car with the shovel over his shoulder. The girl followed. "Besides, I'm going to find a way to get him back. Tonight isn't goodbye."

"More like… 'until next time'?" She figured.

"Yea, like that." He said, shrugging as casually as possible back through the woods almost aimlessly, even though he knew where he was going.

"Ok then." The girl finally conceded, a sad but kind smile on her face as Sam opened the trunk of the Impala and put the shovels back in their proper place. Until next time.

By the time it was over, the dark blanket of the night was beginning to fall away as the sun was starting to wake, rising from the dead. Sam and the shop girl stood there at the foot of a pile of dirt that held his brother close to the Earth in a tight embrace. The sun awoke and painted the sky in her favourite colours; pink, purple, red, orange all of them bathing the dark earth and the pale cross atop Dean's grave in the forest on a hill. A few moments of silence, that was the least Dean deserved on his death day.

Once the sun decided to clean the slate with blue, the shop girl finally turned to look at Sam. He turned to look back at her. "I never caught your name, sir. What is it?"

"Sam." He replied. "Sam Winchester. You?"

"Brianna. Brianna McKenzie."

Sam nodded and decided to extend his hand. "Nice to meet you, Brianna."

Brianna, the shop girl, took Sam's hand and shook it firmly. "Nice to meet you too, Sam."

They both let go at the same time. Both strangers looked at Dean's grave at the same time. "May I ask how he died?" she asked softly, looking at Sam carefully. "You don't have to tell me if it's— I don't want to make you feel worse than you already…." Her voice trailed off.

"No. It's okay." Sam said. "He made a deal with a demon, and that deal gave him only one year left to live. We tried to go after the demon who made the deal, get her to destroy it, but in the end, Dean ended up with…" Sam swallowed a moment, trying to keep his bravado for just a few moments longer. "He ended up with his chest in ribbons, and his insides turned to slop." He said, more bitterly than he had intended.

Brianna put a kind hand on Sam's arm. "I know that my words won't help much, Sam. But for however long he's gone, I'm sorry for what you'll have to live through until you get him back."

Sam paused, looking down at her. Her empathetic attitude, her sure-footed faith that he'd resurrect his brother, honestly took him a little bit by surprise. But it was the support of that compassionate certainty that helped the pain move to the back of his chest instead of the front. "...Thank you." He said sincerely.

"Honour is all mine, Sam." Brianna nodded, slowly moving her gentle hand to hold his. "I'll take good care of Dean 'til he comes back, I promise."

The taller hunter glanced down for a moment before finding the girl's gaze again. "Does this have to be goodbye?" He asked. "Is it alright if I come back and visit…Dean, even before—"

"Yes," Brianna answered quickly, triggering an awkward sort-of chuckle from the both of them as her nose flushed red. "Er, I mean, sure. Tonight can just be…until next time or something."

Sam nodded at Brianna, finding a way to smile at the crimson colouring of her embarrassment spreading across her nose and cheeks. She copied his gesture, growing a smile as if their mirroring motions were amusing to her. Brianna even laughed, shaking her herself to get herself back on track when she looked at him next. "Alright…" she trailed off a moment, almost unsure. "Don't be a stranger?"

Again, Sam nodded at her, still genuinely smiling through the numbness in his bones. "Okay, I won't."

"Don't do anything Dean wouldn't do for you and don't put yourself in too much danger, okay?"

This time, Sam rolled his eyes before he even realised he was doing it. "Yes, Mom."

"Shut up!" She laughed, pulling her hand from his to smack him across the arm. He laughed too, which widened her smile. "I'll see you soon Sam." She said with that smile.

"See you soon, Brianna," Sam said. Brianna waved at him at last before turning and jogging the miles back to her store…alone.

But not for long.


End file.
